Talk:Wilfred Cantwell Smith

Karen Armstrong

"The Meaning and End of Religion remains Smith's most influential work. The writer who, in turn, has taken up and applied most vigorously Smith's emphases is the former nun Karen Armstrong." I don't know of anyone who would relate the two. There are others talking about the definitions of religion (J. Z. Smith, Tomoko Masuzawa, etc.) but Karen Armstrong doesn't really feature in to academic debate at all. Karen Armstrong has more in common with the scholar of religion HUSTON Smith than WILFRED CANTWELL Smith, so perhaps there's a confusion there? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.184.197.209 (talk) 15:22, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

No confusion, I suggest. Armstrong acknowledges her debt to Smith in her autobiographical volume The Spiral Staircase. As Smith advised, she rarely uses the term religion, preferring instead religious tradition or faith. As for her influence and vigor, I would refer you to the article on Karen Armstrong. Wingspeed (talk) 20:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on Wilfred Cantwell Smith. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070218130850/http://www.lib.umich.edu:80/area/Near.East/sferah.htm to http://www.lib.umich.edu/area/Near.East/sferah.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 05:53, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Anti-essentialism

I find the statement in the article:

In the view of Talal Asad, the work was "the first to argue against essentialist definitions of religion."

References

which was added only recently. I can see that Asad does say this. But I have looked through a dozen reviews of the book which make no mention of this concept. Neither is it clear what is meant by an "essentialist definition" of religion. So, I gather that it is Asad's own interpretation of the work. This should not be used in the lead description of the work. So, I am deleting it. Please free to add a passage or section on Asad's interpretation if necessary, where the meaning of "essentialist definition" should be explained. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:50, 26 December 2018 (UTC)